Special Education History and Efficacy

Special Education

History and Efficacy of Inclusion

The increased accountability in schools across the Nation has made it difficult to ignore large numbers of students with special needs who continue to fail at meeting academic standards within the public schools. The passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (1975), along with the Individual with Disabilities Education Act Amendment of 1997, federal mandates have all but guaranteed a free and appropriate education for all students attending public institutions regardless of their specific academic deficiencies. This federal legislation, along with various state requirements, has required that all children have access to a free and appropriate public education, and that every effort is made to insure their academic success (Pickard, 2009).

In 2001, the first year of the No Child Left Behind mandate, the United States Department of Education reported that only nine states within the Union reported any measure of academic achievement for special needs children as it related to Category 10, Students with Disabilities (SWD) (U.S. Department of Education, 2001). Although new data is showing some improvement within our public schools over the course of the past eight years, the need to increase the academic growth of identified students remains a priority among all Institutions within the public school sector (Pickard, 2009).

Continuing controversy over the role of segregated education for children with special needs makes a historical perspective of particular significance. Supporters of inclusion argue for the abolition of special schools as a means of promoting the rights of disabled children to be fully included in society. Defenders of special schools present a case based on the superiority of a system which offers protected time and space for children, supported by smaller class sizes and practitioners with particular expertise (Read and Walmsley, 2006).

At the present time, the idea of integrated education is one of the most widely discussed issues, in the pages of specialized publications, and among specialists who are involved in the teaching and upbringing of children with impaired development, and in the mass schools and special schools. Integration is seen as a way to enable a child with limited health abilities to attend a general education school with ordinary children (Godovnikova, 2009).

Inclusion is thought to be a best practice. Under this philosophy most students with mild disabilities spend the greater part of their day in the general education setting with their peers. Students may be allocated an instructional assistant to help them with their work. Some students with learning disabilities often spend time in a resource room in order to receive direct instruction. The special education team may decide that this is not the right path for a student and try a more restrictive setting known as partial inclusion. Partial inclusion refers to when a student partakes in the general education setting for part of the day but receives the bulk of their academic instruction in a resource room. Due to the severity of some student's disabilities, they may be assigned to a self-contained classroom in where they will spend at least 60% of their school day working directly with the special education staff (Cortiella, 2009).